After the Applause Stops: Who Are You When You No Longer Do What You’Ve Been Doing for Years?

By Sally Bailey Jasperson

Who are you when you no longer do what youve been doing for years?

It is the big question facing anyone who retires. It is something any retiree can relate to, and any retiree could have a story here. However, Im going to limit my stories to those of ballet dancerstop ballet dancersbecause their situation is the most extreme, I think. They start younger, grow up in a rarified atmosphere, mostly see only each other, and become more and more removed from ordinary life. They also succeed, which not all dancers do, and this leaves them open to a rare experiencethe feeling of complete power and control over a situation, as in a performance when everything just happens to click.
I had such an experience once. I still remember it. It occurred while I was dancing Tchaikovskys grand pas de deux from the Nutcracker. This pas de deux is indeed grand. When the orchestra is playing full out and youre dancing full out, feeling every muscle in your body doing exactly as you wish, you and your partner are responding to each other, and the audience is responding to the two of youit is a heady experience. There arent too many like it. So when its time to retire, what is it like to give this up?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Sep 6, 2017
• ISBN: 9781543447736

Book preview

Copyright © 2017 by Sally Bailey Jasperson.

ISBN:   Softcover   978-1-5434-4774-3

            eBook        978-1-5434-4773-6

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Rev. date: 09/06/2017

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Contents

Introduction

Sally Bailey: San Francisco Ballet, 1947 - 1967

Anita Paciotti: San Francisco Ballet, 1968 – 1986

Anton Ness: San Francisco Ballet, 1972 - 1980

Gina Ness: San Francisco Ballet, 1972 - 1985

Katita Waldo: San Francisco Ballet, 1988 – 2010

Tina LeBlanc: San Francisco Ballet, 1992 – 2009

Pierre Vilanoba: San Francisco Ballet, 1998 – 2013

Afterword

Credits

Principal Dancer with the San Francisco Ballet, 1947 – 1967

Publications

Letters from the Maestro: Enrico Cecchetti to Gisella Caccialanza; Translated from the Italian by Gisella Caccialanza, Edited by Sally Bailey. Published in Dance Perspectives, Spring Issue 1971

Striving for Beauty: A Memoire of the Christensen Brothers’ San Francisco Ballet; by Sally Bailey Jasperson, Published by Xlibris, 2003

Introduction

Who are you when you no longer do what you’ve been doing for years?

It is the big question facing anyone who retires. It is something any retiree can relate to, and any retiree could have a story here. However, I’m going to limit my stories to those of ballet dancers—top ballet dancers—because their situation is the most extreme, I think. They start younger, grow up in a rarified atmosphere, mostly see only each other, and become more and more removed from ordinary life. They also succeed, which not all dancers do, and this leaves them open to a rare experience; the feeling of complete power and control over a situation, as in a performance when everything just happens to click.

I had such an experience once. I still remember it. It occurred while I was dancing Tchaikovsky’s Grand Pas de Deux from The Nutcracker. This pas de deux is indeed grand. When the orchestra is playing full out, and you’re dancing full out, feeling every muscle in your body doing exactly as you wish, and you and your partner are responding to each other, and the audience is responding to the two of you…

It is a heady experience. There aren’t too many like it. So, when it’s time to retire, what is it like to give this up?

I have devised nine questions to ask retired principal dancers what it was like for them.

1.  What made you decide to stop performing?

2.  When did you decide to have your last performance?

3.  What was your last performance like?

4.  What was the first thing you did right after you stopped?

5.  What were those first six months like?

6.  How did you feel six months later?

7.  When did you first ask the question, Who am I if I’m not a dancer?

8.  How long did it take to come up with an answer?

9.  How did you choose what to do next?

I decided to try the questions out on myself first, to start out with my own experience, to show what it was like for me to discover who I was if not a dancer.

Sally Bailey: San Francisco Ballet, 1947 - 1967

I danced with the San Francisco Ballet for twenty years, most of that time as a principal dancer. I did my first solo at age sixteen and my first Swan Lake at age nineteen. Some of the roles I created were the Amazon Captain in Lew Christensen’s Con Amore and Eve in his Original Sin, and for many years I was the Sugar Plum Fairy in The Nutcracker. I went on the Company’s U.S. State Department tours to the Orient, South America and the Middle East, then helped to establish our Company in our own city, and then extensively toured the U.S. while gradually moving into a directional position. I left the Company in 1967.

1)  What made you decide to stop performing? I think the idea first came to me while on the Ballet ’65 fall concert tour under Columbia Artists Management. I was acting as tour manager as well as still dancing. We were in a town where some local ballet dancers came to the theater early to watch our